Lawsuits filed over Sidekick data loss

An Atlanta woman has filed a class-action lawsuit against Microsoft and T-Mobile over last week’s Microsoft server outage that caused thousands of Sidekick smartphone users to lose their personal data.

The lawsuit, brought by Sidekick customer Maureen Thompson, alleges T-Mobile, Microsoft and Microsoft subsidiary Danger failed to make good on their marketing promises that the Sidekick data service would securely and automatically back up users’ data.

“Defendants breached their duty to Plaintiff and the other Class members by failing to adequately insure (sic) the safety, security and availability of the data belonging to Plaintiff and the Class members,” Thompson’s complaint (PDF) states. “Specifically, and further, Defendants negligently failed to invest the resources, including hardware, software, procedures, maintenance, security, back up procedures, and the training and testing necessary to insure that the functions and operations Defendants assumed would operate to permit Plaintiff and the members of the Class to access and keep safe and secure that data they entrusted to Defendants.”

Thompson’s daughter, who according to the complaint is an aspiring model and singer, used the Sidekick and stored her appointments, business contacts and song lyrics on the smartphone. All of that data was lost during the Microsoft server outage, the complaint states.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, invites “all others similarly situated” to join the class action. It requests monetary damages and injunctive relief for Microsoft and T-Mobile allegedly “failing to protect Sidekick user data, and false advertising,” according to a news release.

CNET News reported another class-action lawsuit was filed Wednesday against Microsoft and T-Mobile, this one brought by a Bakersfield, Calif., man who lost data as a result of the server outage. In addition to monetary damages, the lawsuit calls for T-Mobile and Microsoft to fix the service or offer full refunds, CNET’s Ina Fried reported.

During the weekend of Oct. 3, a server outage at Microsoft subsidiary Danger, which developed the Sidekick and manages customers’ data plans, disrupted Sidekick data service.

As the fiasco continued, T-Mobile and Microsoft announced that Sidekick customers who reset their phones during the outage most likely had lost all of their personal data, such as contacts and calendar appointments. The main servers and their backups had all failed.

T-Mobile ended up suspending all Sidekick sales. On Tuesday, the companies announced that some customers’ data may yet be retrievable. T-Mobile also has offered affected customers a free month of Sidekick data service and a $100 gift card.

T-Mobile’s Sidekick LX.

“T-Mobile’s initial efforts to reimburse Sidekick users are a step in the right direction, but fail to sufficiently compensate Sidekick users for this disastrous loss of data,” Jay Edelson, the lead attorney in Thompson’s lawsuit, said in a statement. “T-Mobile and Microsoft promised to safeguard the most important data their customers possess and then apparently failed to follow even the most basic data protection principles. What they did is unthinkable in this day and age.”

Microsoft declined to comment on the lawsuits. T-Mobile, which is a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom, gave the following response:

T-Mobile does not comment on pending litigation. We are focused on helping our Sidekick customers recover from this recent service disruption and are continuing to support Microsoft’s ongoing efforts to address and resolve the Danger platform issues.